Entrepreneur online social networks: structure, diversity and impact on start-up survival

In this paper, we discuss the results of a pilot study in which we use a novel approach to collect entrepreneur online social network data from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. We studied the size and structure of entrepreneur social networks by analysing the online network industry and location diversity. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs use multiple online social networks that form their network-of-networks (NoN). We examined the entrepreneurs' network size and diversity to gauge their impact on performance in terms of survival. Our findings suggest that the entrepreneurs' LinkedIn network size has a positive relationship with entrepreneurial survival. However, the size of the entrepreneurs' Facebook network is not related to their survival and the size of entrepreneurs' Twitter network has a negative relationship with performance. We visualised the entrepreneurs' LinkedIn network using industry diversity. Finally, we reflect on the implications for future research to uncover the structure of entrepreneur online social networks.